Writer Stats and Pats on the Back

I admit it. I'm addicted to numbers. That's a pretty drastic admission for a novelist, a person who makes her living with words, but it's true. I love analyzing the statistics behind the writing.

My latest book is a perfect example. I just typed The End on my thirty-sixth novel, a cozy mystery with the working title As the Bee Stings. I worked hard on this book, and as always, I kept a detailed journal of my daily progress. I'm sure many writers don't focus on the numbers, but with my background in computer program development and analysis, I can't help it. I analyze my daily progress. 

In fact, I have a detailed spreadsheet on which I keep track of daily progress-to-goal, and project time-to-completion. (Yeah, really. It's a geeky work of art.) And at the end of a project (or when I type THE END on a first draft) I analyze my work. Something like a report card that only I see. 

Only now I'm sharing it with you. :-) So here's the data:

• I typed the first word on As the Bee Stings on January 4, 2019. I typed THE END on February 1, 2019.
• Between 1/4/19 and  2/1/19 I wrote a total of 25 days.
• Between 1/4/19 and 2/1/19 there was an elapsed time of 28 days.
• That means I took off 3 days.
• The final word count of the book was 54,823 words. That means I averaged 2,192 words per day that I actually wrote. 
• The day with the shortest word count was Jan 31, with a total of 174 words.
• The day with the longest word count was Jan 30, with a total of 4,790 words.

Now, this must seem like a bunch of numbers to you, but to me it means SUCCESS! I wrote an entire novel in 28 days, including days off!!! WOO HOO!

Yeah, I confess that doesn't account for the plotting, which took me a couple of months before I began writing. On January 4 I had a fully outlined, chapter-by-chapter plot to work from, and that plot took a lot of thought and planning. But still...I wrote a book in 28 days!!!

I don't know what the final title will be - that's up to my publisher. I'll let you know. But one thing I do know. I love this book, and I wrote it in 28 days!!!!

Thanks for celebrating with me.